Asynchronous replication relates to a technology used in server and network storage. Once data has been written to the primary storage site, new writes to that site can be accepted, without having to wait for the secondary or remote storage site to also finish its writes. The remote storage is updated, but probably with a small lag. Performance is greatly increased, but in case of losing a local storage, the remote storage is not guaranteed to have the current copy of data and most recent data may be lost. Thus, the downside to asynchronous replication is the possibility of data loss if the primary site should happen to fail before the data has been written to the secondary site.
As companies today become more accustomed to storing important company information on their data network, the value of these networks and the data they store continues to grow. In fact, many companies now identify the data stored on their computer network as their most valuable corporate asset.